Rod flung up his hands in helpless exasperation. Unexpectedly, the Aumrarr gave him a wry smile, grabbed one of those waving hands, and used it to tow him around the corner. 'Come. We must find that well.'
Before he could reply she suddenly staggered, the air around her glowed and sang, and a metal gauntlet appeared, silently and out of nowhere, on her sword hand. Its appearance gently thrust her bloody blade out of her fingers, to clatter to the stone floor.
Taeauna stared at the massive, gleaming war-gauntlet with just as much gaping astonishment as Rod was. Then she let go of him to use her free hand to try to snatch the heavy thing off without success, despite a few moments of hard-panting struggling. The gauntlet just wouldn't budge.
Rod watched all the color drain out of her face. 'Where did it come from?' he couldn't help but ask. 'Does it feel magical? What's it for?'
'Yes, it feels magical!' the Aumrarr told him, eyes large and dark in a snow-white face. 'As for your other questions: I don't know! I don't know!'
Then boots were pounding toward them, out of the darkness of the far end of the passage.
Rod set down the sacks and drew his sword; Taeauna had just enough time to scoop up her blade before five Dark Helms burst into view, and they were fighting for their lives.
Rod flinched back as a sword struck his own blade so hard that his hand went numb. The Dark Helm pressing him stumbled on the edge of one laedre, and Rod hacked desperately at his head, clumsily and sideways, catching the man's helm and wrenching it around.
The warrior screamed through the metal as his ears and nose were torn, and then a second Dark Helm lunged at Rod over the shoulder of the first one. Rod backed away so swiftly he almost fell, and the second Dark Helm fell over the first as the blinded first warrior blundered sideways into his charge.
Rod sworded the backs of both of their necks as hard as he could, feeling his sword bite in. It came back red and dripping, and his stomach lurched again.
He threw up right in the visor-covered face of another Dark Helm, who staggered back in disgust. Taeauna used the space that gave her to dance away from the wall where she'd been frantically parrying three shoulder- jostling foes, and tossed her sword to her free hand to stab around behind a sword-arm, into its leather-covered armpit. Even as that foe sobbed and dropped his sword, another Dark Helm's blade was darting at her. She slapped it aside with the gauntlet, and at the touch of her gage, the metal of that blade melted away into curling smoke.
The Dark Helm stared at the stub of his weapon in astonishment, but Taeauna never slowed; she drove her gauntleted fist in the other direction, into the ribs of the man she'd just wounded.
His breastplate was suddenly gone-just
An instant later, he was staring at her in pain and fear, bare-headed. She broke his jaw and struck him senseless with her next blow, and then turned back to the warrior whose blade she'd first melted away. The third of the Dark Helms she'd been fighting had already fled back down the passage.
The swordless Dark Helm was backing away, hauling out his dagger. Taeauna glared at him, but took the time to gingerly put her blade back into her gauntleted hand.
It did not melt away; she sighed in relief and headed after the Dark Helm, who kept on backing away, waving his dagger warningly.
Taeauna broke into a sudden run, to catch her foe, and Rod hastily scooped up the laedren and ran after her.
When she caught the man, it was his turn to desperately parry, the dagger bending under the force of her cut. Rod skidded to a stop beside them and used the momentum of his run to bring the laedren looping around like a huge sap, crashing into the Dark Helm's arm and shoulder and sending him staggering. Taeauna sprang at him, clutching, and his greaves, breastplate, and gorget all melted away before he got his dagger up into her face where her waiting gauntlet caught it. The man's moan of fear ended abruptly when Taeauna's punch crushed his throat and bounced his head off the stone floor with brutal force.
'Come on,' she gasped at Rod, 'or we'll be standing right here all day and night while they come at us. We've got to get to that well!'
'Do you know where it is?' he asked, as they started running again.
'Certainly,' Taeauna replied, and pointed at the floor. 'That way.'
'Thanks!' he responded sarcastically, as they trotted down the passage into steadily deeper gloom, and found the first descending stone staircase. The first flight was bare and empty, but as they turned at the landing, about a dozen Dark Helms came trotting up the steps toward them.
'Don't let any of them get around behind me,' Taeauna panted. 'Just swing those laedlen!'
So Rod did, timing his first buffeting blow to catch a lunge headed for the Aumrarr. The warrior was strong; Rod's attack just moved his arm and blade aside a foot or so, but it was enough. Taeauna's sword was like a flickering flame among the black blades, and Dark Helms were reeling, clutching at slit throats, and tumbling back down the stairs, driving down the warriors behind them into a stumbling, fighting-for-balance chaos. Rod waded into that with his swinging sacks, making sure off-balance men fell back onto those below. The Aumrarr punched aside swords, destroying them halfway down to the hilts at a touch.
'There are only two!' someone snarled from several steps down. 'Stand and fight! Just charge, and hurl them back, and swarm them! Come on!'
Taeauna waded down the steps in the direction of that voice, punching and slapping, then driving her blade home wherever armor vanished. A voice cursed aloud as its owner turned and fled back down the stairs.
That started a rout; suddenly everyone was running, leaving only the wounded and dying behind on the steps. Ruthlessly Taeauna descended from body to body, turning the former into the latter.
Rod did not want to see that bloody work too closely. He hung back, settling the laedlen properly over his shoulder and gingerly wiping the blade of his sword clean on a body clad in leathers that had been under now- vanished armor, that thankfully had its head turned away.
'Come!' Taeauna called at last. 'The well, remember?'
Rod sighed and hastened down the steps to join her, carefully skirting the slumped bodies.
The Aumrarr stared up at him consideringly. 'You're fine in a fray, but hate the blood the moment you've time to think about it, don't you?'
Rod nodded. 'I'm a writer, not a-'
A Dark Helm came running up the stairs, and Taeauna coolly turned, parried the man's blade with her gauntlet, and drove her sword under the edge of his visor and into his throat.
'And I'm an Aumrarr,' she said a little sadly. 'Perhaps the last one. Killing Dark Helms is what I do, now.' Then she shrugged, and added, 'Well, 'tis more purpose than some folk have in their lives. Let's find that well.'
'And fill it up with blood,' Rod murmured to himself. He took care to speak so quietly that she couldn't possibly hear him.
Warsword Lhauntur looked up at the fat trader's cheerful hail. He recognized the man: Reskrul, who came over the mountains from Scarlorn once a year, his mules heavy-laden with tools and buttons and fastenings that the folk of Hollowtree bought eagerly.
'Be welcome in Hollowtree,' he said cheerfully, 'and have a tankard. We're just about to ride out on the night patrols. What news?'
'Hah! Big news. Recall a wingless Aumrarr who came through here some days back?'
'I do, indeed.'
'Well, seems she laid waste to Arbridge, and went on down into Galath swording barons and besieging castles right and left.'
Lhauntur raised a disbelieving eyebrow. 'All by herself? That'd be a feat worthy of a god.'
'Ah, but she wasn't alone. There's a man traveling with her.'
That brought forth snorts of amusement around the warriors' table, and one jesting comment. 'He's deadly with a pitchfork, that one!'
'Oh?' Reskrul said happily, pulling himself a tankard. 'Well, the traders I met outside Arvale said she slaughtered hundreds forcing her way into Wrathgard, and enslaved poor Tindror!'
He peered around. 'Looks like she didn't do all that much damage here.'
